Mon 02 September 2019:
Indonesian police have banned violent demonstrations and speeches promoting separatism in the easternmost region of Papua, which had been rocked by protests for two weeks, the state news agency Antara reported on Monday.
Papua has been racked by the most serious civil unrest in years over perceived racial and ethnic discrimination. Some protesters have also been demanding a referendum on independence, something the government has ruled out.
Papuan police chief Rudolf Alberth Rodja issued six notices over the weekend, which included the ban on demonstrations and a list of criminal charges that could be brought against violators, Antara reported.
“Any person or organization is prohibited from carrying out or spreading separatism in expressing opinions in public and violation of this will result in strict action and law enforcement,” Antara wrote.
Police also said in the notices that spreading fake news was a punishable crime, the news agency reported.
Police have arrested 28 people in Papua for “damaging and burning properties, violence, provocation and looting”, while two students have been arrested for treason in the capital, Jakarta.
Papua and West Papua provinces, the resource-rich western part of the island of New Guinea, were a Dutch colony that was incorporated into Indonesia after a widely criticized U.N.-backed referendum in 1969.
The spark for the latest protests was a racist slur against Papuan students, who were hit by tear gas in their dormitory and detained in the city of Surabaya on the main island of Java on Aug. 17, Indonesia’s Independence Day, for allegedly desecrating a national flag.
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